I take the Metro to work each day in Washington, D.C., and as I ascend toward ground level at the Verizon Center, I've been passing an advertisement for United Concordia about the savings you can get from its dental plans. Presumably, it's also open-enrollment season. Thus, you'd think, there could be a way to use…Read more United Concordia doesn’t understand the phrase "open season"

Credit: John Steven FernandezFrom the Feb. 2 print edition of the Times, to begin an article about new restaurant uses for pepperoni:ACROSS the United States, artisanal pizza joints are opening faster than Natalie Portman movies.Cue the eye-roll. Even after I consider by March, she'll have had three films released since Dec. 1 in the U.S.…Read more Let it never be said the New York Times isn’t hip

... because you won't get a second chance, your attempts at context will be missed by many, and you'll lose any notion of control over your content as well as any chance to guide the conversation. This is a fear and opportunity much discussed in social media, but it applies to the content your social…Read more Headlines are the only things that matter …

Yeah, that headline had better bring results, or I'm going to be upset.Anyways, what's happening in the world of copy editing, editing and journalism at large:Word Grrls notes how one missing letter on a book-seller's site goes from the sassy, if cliche, "Dead Sexy" to the disturbingly niche "Dead Sex." Unless that means sex by…Read more Necrophilia-inducing typos and other editing links: A roundup

My professional copy-editing work includes a daily publication looking, through brief summaries, at the nuclear energy industry. Editorials and guest columns on the idea of nuclear energy are a major part of industry news because, well, there hasn't been a new nuclear plant built in a while.Often, those op-eds are by experts in the field,…Read more When editors must say, "You don’t know what you’re talking about"

A copy desk being reduced or eliminated brings many signs of lower quality, and reporters, too, suffer when their numbers are diminished and they're forced to "do more with less."There are two categories of fear for journalists: The big picture, the fear that news isn't being covered, isn't being covered well or in enough depth,…Read more 3 snapshots of news without editing

We all have those days -- editors and reporters simply have the mistakes immortalized more easily.Instead of getting too down, have a laugh at these examples of journalism that, if nothing else, put your goof-up into perspective:FarkFunnyOrDie's (see? an error of my own) collection of the funniest police blotters. Not all are newspaper mistakes, but…Read more Have you messed up today? 2 items to help you feel better

Journalists are rightly called watchdogs of government, the rich and the powerful. They needn't be the only source of investigative efforts, but their profession lends itself to the task.However, with slashed budgets and an emphasis on providing what the reader wants (or, more often, what we think the reader wants), much of the watchdog journalism,…Read more If journalists don’t pay attention, who will?